Copyright © 2003-2005, Adam Dawes

Extra weapons

At regular intervals along the highway you will encounter weapons vans sent by your HQ to upgrade and replenish the facilities of your car. Ashley will warn you when you approach a weapons van, and the appropriate icon will begin to glow at the bottom/left of the screen.

The weapons van will initially be parked at the side of the road. As you pass it, it will pull out into the main highway and accelerate to catch you up. To dock with the weapons van, let it pull ahead of you and then match speed with it. The van will drop its tailgate, allowing you to drive into the back. You must ensure you are aligned as carefully as possible to avoid clipping the side of the van on your way in; it is also very difficult to dock with a van while you are driving around a corner.

Once you have docked with the van it will perform whatever upgrade is appropriate on your car, and will then drop you at the side of the road ready to continue on your way. You can only dock with each van once; after docking is complete, the weapons van icon will no longer glow and further docking with that particular van is not possible.

Also be sure not to let the van get too far away from you before you have docked. If you drive too far ahead of it, the van will not be able to catch up; if it drives too far ahead of you, it will leave you behind.

The different weapons vans you will encounter in the game are as follows:

Delivery van. This is not actually a weapons van, but is the van that delivers your car at the start of the game and each time you lose a life. If is not possible to dock with this type of van.

Smoke van. Fits a smoke-screen to your car. When deployed, the smoke screen forms a wide blanket of dense smoke across the road. The smoke does not cause any damage to vehicles that are caught in it, but causes them to drive blindly to the side to get out of the smoke. It can therefore be used to edge cars off the road.

Oil van. Fits an oil cannister to the back of your car. When deployed, the oil pours out on to the road behind you, causing any cars that drive over it to skid uncontrollably until they crash. This can be very powerful, and also allows you to destroy the armoured Jeep, but be careful not to let civilians get caught in the mess.

Missile van. Adds a small number of Surface-to-Air missiles to your car. These can be used to try to destroy the helicopter. You should try to fire the missile when the helicopter is as near to directly above you as possible to minimise the chance of the missile missing its target.

Repair van. You will get a very small health boost from docking with any of the vans, but this van is manned by an engineer who is able to perform more comprehensive repairs to your car, restoring much more of its health. Do be careful docking when on very low health however, so that you don't clip the side on the way in.